Environmental refugees and the 1951 Convention
Over the past thirteen years, an estimated 24 million environmental refugees have been displaced annually as a result of climate change and extreme weather disasters. The magnitude of the climate change crisis and the sheer number of people moving as result has led to considerable debate about how to best address the crisis itself, as well as the plight of those currently being displaced.
Not surprisingly, part of this debate has focussed on the terms of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and how these might be modified in order to meet the needs of environmental refugees (also referred to as climate or climate change refugees). As Somabha Bandopadhay recently wrote, environmental refugees ‘form a considerable portion of the millions of people who have been displaced’ in recent years and the time has therefore come for the international refugee regime to incorporate them ‘within its fold.’ This would require a transformation not only of the refugee regime, but of the definition of a refugee as such. Currently, the 1951 definition is predicated on the notion of persecution, so a definitional change would require a radically different framework for addressing the plight of refugees and questions of protection. As a result, others have suggested developing an entirely new, alternative legal instrument to expressly address the issue of environmental refugees. However, there is considerable and justifiable concern about the political will required to do this, as well as differences in opinion about how the nature of responsibilities towards environmental refugees should best be framed.
In order to understand the risks inherent in modifying the definition of a refugee within the 1951 Refugee Convention, we can return to the drafting of the 1951 Convention to see how differently the relationship between environmental disasters and human displacement was configured in the minds of those charged with developing a framework for refugee protection - a framework that ultimately rests on notions of persecution.
During the summer of 1951, delegates to the Conference of Plenipotentiaries met in Geneva to hammer out the legal definition of a refugee. As delegates were meeting, severe flooding occurred in the American Midwest. The immediate cause was the heavy rains that fell in the May of that year, but the longer-term explanation was a history of human manipulation of the natural environment and the failure of levees along the Missouri River drainage basin.
For four days in July, the rushing, overflowing waters of the Kaw River wreaked havoc in Kansas and Missouri leading to the deaths of 19 people, causing injuries to 1,100 others and resulting in the displacement of 518,000 people. The flooding also caused over $9 billion (present-day figures) in damage. The flooding hit major industrial centres. At meetings in Geneva, delegates expressed their ‘profound sympathy’ to the United States and to ‘the victims of the disaster’, which had made many people ‘homeless’. In response to the devastation, the Red Cross and the Salvation Army provided refuge along with emergency food supplies. Boiled water advisories were issued.
News accounts carried headlines such as ‘Refugee Problem in Capital’ and reported that ‘refugees poured into the municipal auditorium, the Masonic hall, hotels and private homes’ in Topeka (Kansas City Star, 13 July 1951). Although the term ‘refugee’ was also being used by delegates in Geneva, this figurative media language stood in stark contrast to the discussions of delegates around a legal definition for refugees. There was no sense that the people displaced in the United States were akin to refugees in the Second World War or those persecuted for their political beliefs in the early days of the Cold War. Rather, in the context of the severe flooding, the term ‘refugee’ was used more generally, usually to evoke a sense of uprootedness and displacement. At the same time, because the displacement was understood in uniquely domestic terms, the response was also framed along these lines. The solutions proposed focused on rebuilding and reasserting control over the environment as quickly as possible. This approach was confirmed by US President Harry Truman as he toured his home state from the air and proposed major infrastructure funding to create new levees and reservoirs. It was a response typical of what historian Jack Davis has observed of the dominant impulse in the United States during this period, which was a kind of ‘can-do’ approach to controlling and managing nature with little sense of humility. In this instance, environmental disaster and human displacement were understood as both temporary and fixable. The overarching concern was the long-term impact on the industrial sector, an anxiety perpetuated by the frequent use of images showing floating cars to convey the impact of the flooding.
All of this meant that, as delegates met to finalise the legal definition of a refugee at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, there was no sense that the United States, or ‘flood refugees’ generally (there was also significant flooding in Japan at the time), needed international assistance. Moreover, there was little sense that human intervention, despite aggressive infrastructure development, was responsible for the flooding. At a time when scientists and engineers seemingly had a cure for all of nature’s ills, the scope of the problem seemed manageable, and in the case of the flooding in the US Midwest, it was. American wealth and emergency relief efforts helped with the rebuilding, and the receding flood waters meant that the worst was quickly over.
In Geneva, the flooding in the United States received brief mention in the form of expressed condolences, but the displacement in the American Midwest did not affect the deliberations taking place around the legal definitions and state responsibilities vis-à-vis refugees. Rather, the most frequent reference to refugees and flooding during the drafting of the convention was in terms of the ‘flood’ of people who might seek refuge if the convention definition was drawn too broadly (language frequently used by the French delegate Robert Rochefort). When environmental disasters were mentioned, it was to underscore the persecution-basis of the refugee rights regime. The delegate from Israel, Jacob Robinson, observed that the convention ‘did not refer to refugees from natural disasters, for it was difficult to imagine that fires, floods, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, for instance, differentiated between their victims on the grounds of race, religion or political opinion.’ The persecution framework was essential to limiting the scope of the convention and Robinson’s comments are a reminder of how carefully delegates worked to minimize state obligations towards those forced to flee their countries of origin.
Critically, when the 1951 Convention was drafted, the very idea of environmental refugees was only a shadow on the horizon. The first UN report dealing with the issue would only be published in 1985. Moreover, the responsibility for responding to environmental displacement was largely seen within national frameworks. Seventy years on from when the drafters sat down in Geneva, climate change has literally changed the landscape in which displacement occurs, and alongside this, has transformed debates about responsibility and potential solutions. There is now a pronounced sense that environmental refugees are born of human-made disasters (as reiterated in the recently released IPCC report) as opposed to any kind of natural disaster and that climate change is an issue that knows no national bounds.
The way in which environmental displacement has been understood historically is critical to any contemporary discussions about how to address the plight of environmental refugees today, as it helps us understand the possibilities and limitations of revisiting the 1951 Convention’s definition of a refugee to incorporate those fleeing environmental crises. It will take more than a definitional change for the 1951 Convention to be effective and relevant in addressing the plight of climate change refugees: notions of responsibility must also evolve.
The header image is a black and white photograph showing a small rowing boat floating on floodwater. To the left, a car with its wheels deep in the water is visible; in the centre and right of the picture, a small railway station building, the wagons of a freight train, and a line of telegraph poles all stand in the water. Allen County, Kansas, Floods – 1951 (DaRT ID: 226653). Used by permision of kansasmemory.org, Kansas State Historical Society. Copy and Reuse Restrictions Apply.
